For Those With Their Heads in the Clouds, He Gets High-Flying Fantasy Off the Ground

There was Frederick Bottome of Newport Beach in his old leather flying jacket and white scarf flapping in the wind, flying upside down in the open cockpit of the Pitts S2 biplane, reliving his days as a bush pilot in Alaska.

“I can only say one word about it,” said Bottome, a World War II Army pilot. “Fantastic.” The flight was a birthday present from his wife, Kate.

“And that,” said pilot-owner Chris MacDonald of Fantasy Aviation, which charges $125 for a half-hour aerobatic ride that comes with a memory-preserving videotape recording, “is why I’m doing it. Flying is not just for business-travel, it’s also for entertainment.”

And it’s also profitable, said MacDonald, who claimed that the business has been “in the black from the day we opened” two years ago. He has four biplanes for hire and, beside regular advertising in flight magazines, sells his flights from a booth at the Orange County swap meet.

For adventurous duos, said MacDonald, who lives in Costa Mesa and works on computer security for TRW in Redondo Beach when he’s not flying, “we send up two biplanes to do acrobatic loops and rolls together” over the ocean or desert, away from populated areas and other air traffic.

But MacDonald said that the trip, although “exciting and pulsating, is not really dangerous. I have never had a close call or an accident.” He said that most passengers come to John Wayne Airport “a little nervous, but once they get up and experience the sense of freedom and adventure, the flight becomes a real thrill for them. I talk to them throughout the flight.”

For a less rigorous flight, he offers a scenic ride for $75. But for something different: “we also take hot balloon and helicopter rides.”

Fullerton artist Florence Arnold, 85, who is exhibiting her abstract works until Nov. 1 at Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, announced her plans for the next 25 years: “Continue painting, take a trip in space and keep breathing.”

Amateur photographer John D. Childs, 21, of Santa Ana won the award for patience, courage (he had just been to a doctor) and success over about 1,500 others in a bank-sponsored contest when he photographed the Huntington Beach Pier during an amazing sunset, taking 100 pictures in the process. He won a $500 U.S. Savings Bond and will have his picture printed on a Home Savings of America 1986 calendar with a nationwide distribution of 500,000.

While many of the 500 members of the rolling and hilly Mission Viejo Country Club are lower handicap golfers, the club’s new president, Donald L. Banks, 44, who plays to a 7 handicap, said: “The fellow out there with a high handicap has to really love the game to play here.

“After some pros shot a round here and scored badly,” said Banks, a Mission Viejo stock broker, “the course has become known as Mission Impossible.”

Acknowledgments--Irvin C. Chapman, 74, of Newport Beach, a YMCA backer from the time he first went to a YMCA summer camp at age 12, was presented the prestigious USA National Treasure Award for volunteer service.